Career profile
Christian Winward
Chief Information Security Officer, PNC
- Current role, per sources checked 27 July 2026
- Not stated in the sources
Christian Winward is chief information security officer of PNC. The bank's own newsroom announced the appointment on July 27, 2026.
Career path
Winward joins PNC from FirstBank, the Colorado lender that became part of PNC earlier in 2026, where he had been chief information officer and a member of the bank's senior leadership team. His career at FirstBank spanned more than 30 years, beginning as a teller and progressing through leadership roles across technology and project management before he reached the CIO chair, according to the press release. As CIO, he led the modernization of FirstBank's technology capabilities and supported the integration of FirstBank into PNC, and he is based in Denver, one of PNC's strategic technology locations.
Banking Dive's coverage the following day framed the appointment against the timeline of the acquisition, noting Winward was named PNC's CISO roughly seven months after the bank closed its $4.1 billion purchase of FirstBank.
Scope of the seat
Winward reports to Debbie Guild, PNC's head of Technology, and leads the bank's Enterprise Information Security organization, which the newsroom release says safeguards PNC's digital identity, data, people and technology environment, overseeing cyber strategy, attack surface monitoring, security operations, incident response, data protection, governance, risk assessments, and third-party and subsidiary security, along with PNC's Global Security Fusion Center that integrates cyber, physical, fraud and insider-threat intelligence. Guild said in the release that Winward's leadership of major technology functions, his role in the FirstBank integration and his understanding of the business position him to "build on the excellent foundation already in place and help advance the security and resilience of our enterprise."
The sourced record does not state what security-specific credentials or training Winward holds; his documented path to the role runs through general banking technology leadership rather than a dedicated security track.